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[MUSIC PLAYING] [SPEAKER] This is eClips unCut, where we bring you full-length versions of our conversations with entrepreneurs and business leaders.
DAVID KEATING: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Sigma Phi Society and the James Norris Oliphant Distinguished Speakers Fellowship of Sigma Phi, I'd like to welcome you to this very special evening with Senator Bradley, the honorable Mr. Ken Dryden, moderated by Jeremy Schaap. My name is David Keating.
I am a senior in the Sigma Phi Society, and I'm the undergraduate chairman of the Oliphant program. I'd like to especially thank Larry Tanenbaum, Cornell class of 1968, and his wife, Judy, whose generous donation to the Speaker Series has made programs such as tonight's possible. I'd also like to thank all the alumni of Sigma Phi for coming back to campus for this special program, on this, the kickoff event of a great weekend celebrating 75 years at our newly renovated home on West Campus.
I would also like to thank the Cornell administration and various offices around the university for their support of this program, both tonight and in the past, and for their help in support of the Society's initiatives as a whole. In its over 40 years of existence, the Oliphant Speaker Series has brought more than 100 notable speakers to Cornell, including Muhammad Ali, Tom Brokaw, Benazir Bhutto, Isaac Asimov, and many others. It is one of a handful of student-run, nationally recognized speakers programs in the nation. It is unique in that in addition to providing the Cornell community with a public event, such as the one tonight here in Bailey hall, the speakers also spend time with students in a smaller academic setting. The Speakers Fellowship also welcomes co-sponsorship opportunities with campus organizations, residence halls, and academic programs.
As for our speakers tonight, they truly need no introduction. These two men have followed similar paths to success. From the rinks, gymnasiums, and classrooms of the Ivy League to the arenas of professional sports to politics and public service, success has followed them throughout their careers. Please refer to your programs for a short biography of tonight's participants.
To conclude the evening here, there will be a question and answer session. Questions for tonight's guests can be written on your programs. Please pass these to the end of the aisle to be collected by an usher. Questions have also been submitted in advance online. Thank you and enjoy the evening.
[APPLAUSE]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- As a teenager, Ken Dryden was the 14th overall selection in the 1964 National Hockey League draft. In the spring of 1971, Dryden, despite having played only six regular season games, was named to start in goal for the Montreal Canadiens in the playoffs. His brilliance helped make it possible for Montreal to win the Stanley Cup. And Dryden won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most outstanding performer of the playoffs.
The following season, technically his rookie season, Dryden claimed the Calder Trophy as the NHL's Rookie of the Year. Then, in his final six seasons, Dryden dominated his position as no other goaltender had ever dominated the position. With the Canadiens winning five Stanley Cups, Dryden won five Vezina Trophies for leading the league in fewest goals per game. In seven full seasons, he was elected a first-team All-Star five times.
It was no coincidence that Montreal failed to win the championship in 1974 when Dryden spent the year out of hockey, forsaking the Montreal Forum for nearby McGill University, where he earned his law degree. After the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1979, their sixth with him in goal, Dryden retired. He was only 32.
Life didn't slow down. The following winter, he was ABC's color commentator when the US fashioned its Miracle on Ice.
- Five seconds left in the game.
- It's over.
- Do you believe in miracles?
[CHEERING]
Yes!
- Unbelievable.
- Among other works, he wrote The Game, the consensus greatest hockey book ever. He served as Ontario's first youth commissioner and as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 2004, 21 years after he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, Dryden was elected to Canada's parliament. He immediately entered the cabinet as minister of social development. He's now in his third term representing York Centre.
He remains the NHL's all-time leader in winning percentage and adjusted goals against average. And in 1998, The Hockey News rated Dryden the 25th greatest hockey player ever.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- Bill Bradley came to national prominence in the early 1960s as one of most accomplished college basketball players ever. After his junior season at Princeton, Bradley led the United States to a gold medal at the Olympics in Rome. As a senior, he led the Tigers out of the Ivy League and into the 1965 Final Four.
That year, he was the subject of John McPhee's acclaimed biography, A Sense of Where You Are, which suggested that Bradley's basketball talent was exceeded only by his intellect. Upon graduation, Bradley, who was both the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and the 1965 national player of the year, chose Oxford over the NBA. After returning to the US in 1967, he joined the New York Knicks. In his third season in New York, Bradley started at forward for the first Knicks team ever to win the NBA title. Three years later, he was named for the all-star team and the Knicks won their second title.
In 1977, Bradley retired from the NBA and immediately hit the campaign trail as a candidate for the United States Senate. He was 34 when New Jersey sent him to Washington that fall. In three terms in the Senate, where he spent eight more years than he had in the NBA, Bradley fashioned legislation that overhauled the tax code, protected the rights and health of children, and reformed campaign financing.
In the year 2000, he sought the Democratic nomination for president, receiving endorsements from several of the nation's most prominent legislators but was defeated by Vice President Al Gore. In 2008, Bradley was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama in the primaries and general election. Few, if any other, modern Americans have graduated from college with so many expecting so much from them in so many different ways. Somehow, Bill Bradley, Basketball Hall of Famer and three-term United States senator, has met and exceeded those great expectations.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Good evening. My name's Jeremy Schaap. I graduated from Cornell in 1991. I'm honored to be here among you and on the stage with the two greatest scholar athletes ever. First things first, as you saw from the video, there was a time when Princeton had a basketball team.
[LAUGHTER]
You may not have known that. I know it's a younger crowd. And I want to apologize personally to Senator Bradley. I should have done better, but we do corrections even in TV. I should have said Tokyo in 1964 not Rome in 1964. I apologize.
This is, strangely enough, for two men who have had careers that have followed such similar paths, only the second time that they've met. And I have it on good authority that the first time they met was 30 years ago in New York City at a dinner at The Russian Tea Room on West 57th Street. And I think the story illustrates something about our panelists tonight.
After a long meal and a presumably very expensive meal, Senator Bradley, a public servant at the time, not working on Wall Street but in Washington, picked up the tab. And despite the reputation of most athletes, he made an effort and immediately picked up the bill, put down his credit card, got it back, and tore up the receipt, at which point our fellow Cornellian, Arthur Kaminsky who is here tonight, the renowned attorney who happened to be at dinner with Ken and with Bill, said, Bill, why would you tear up that receipt? This is a legitimate business expense. And Senator Bradley, to his credit, said, not really, Arthur.
So there are too many people, certainly I know in my business anyway, who would make that distinction between real and not-quite-real business expenses, which brings me to, might as well be our first topic, integrity-- public integrity, personal integrity. For two men who spent, as we said, almost all of the last 45 years in the public spotlight, under constant scrutiny, neither of you has ever, in any way, been questioned about your integrity. And I'm wondering what the term even means to you, Ken.
KEN DRYDEN: It's a hard word, and it's a word I don't use. And the standard of it scares me. I think, probably for all of us, we learn some of its lessons along the way. And I think what we mostly learn is how we feel in different situations after we've done certain things. And some things make us feel pretty good, and some don't make us feel very good.
And somewhere down the line, I can remember winning games in certain ways that didn't feel right. And I wanted every bit of good feeling to come out of every game that was possible. I was selfish. I wanted us to earn it all and to feel at the end as if we had earned it all because then I could feel the glow of it.
And what I didn't want was to feel any tinge of regret and a regret that might come from doing something or something else in the course of the game. It just-- it wasn't worth it. It just-- it robbed the feeling of the game at the end. And so after you learn that lesson a few times, then it's pretty easy to carry on that way.
BILL BRADLEY: I think integrity, if you were going to try to define it or if I was, I would say that it is a couple of steps beyond what is legal. And it is having a kind of internal clock about what is right and then acting on that under any and all circumstances. And I think you see it in politics. I think you see it in sports.
And I'll give you just a quick example in each. Larry Bird, not a bad player, playing with Celtics, played in the Olympic games in '92-- bad back-- had a clause in his contract that said if he did not retire by August 15, he would get an additional two years on his contract at $4.5 million a year. He came to Dave Gavitt, who was the head of the Celtics on August 10-- said Dave, I was in the Olympics. I worked all summer in French Lick, Indiana to get my back back. It's not going to come. I'm going to retire.
And Gavitt said to him, Larry, why don't you think about it for a week, [CHUCKLES] knowing, of course, that'd put him over and what he meant to the Celtics and to Boston. And bird looked at him and said, look, Dave, if I know I can't play, I'm not going to take the money. And he left $9 million on the table. That's integrity.
In politics, a senator named Russ Feingold out in Wisconsin, a big advocate of public finance, a big advocate of campaign finance reform, sent a tough campaign. He's against an opponent who's taking a lot of PAC money. He refused to take PAC money. The party says, unless you take PAC money, he's going to bury you.
I'm 30 points up. Then it went to 20. Then it went to 15. Then it went to the last week, and it was down with three points. And the party came to me and said, look, here's the money. All you have to do is say yes. He said, look, I have sponsored a bill that says no PAC money. I'm not going to take PAC money. I'll take my chances.
He was willing to risk it all because of a sense of integrity. He happened to win, and it's a good ending to the story, but he might not have. But if he had lost, he would have done it because he was several steps beyond what was legal, and it is what was right.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Whether or not it's fair, and we all know that there have always been scandals, whether it's Teapot Dome or Watergate, the public, in the United States any way-- the polls tell us that there is a perception that politics is less honest than it has been in the past, that there is less integrity among our public officials. Ken, in Canada, what is the perception of public officials right now?
KEN DRYDEN: Pretty much the same.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, you know. I mean, probably one of the first two or three questions that I get all the time will be why. Why did you decide to run for election? And for all of the reasons that you said, and that perception-- I think that if you had two people here who were in government in essentially 190 other countries, you'd have the same reaction.
And it's too bad. I mean, it makes for a tough environment to work in. It lowers expectations. It allows lowered expectations to be met and to be gotten away with. And I know Bill feels this way, and I certainly do, that there-- there's something important about doing public work. And it is a real privilege to do public work, but I don't think that that feeling is shared by very many people.
JEREMY SCHAAP: One thing we talk about when we talk about politics and that is frequently cited as a reason for people were successful not to go into public service are the compromises that have to be made, and compromises not in the Henry Clay sense, not in the sense of someone making reasonable deals with the opposition, but in compromising their ideals. No one's ever suggested that either of you has done that. So let me ask you, Bill, do you feel that your integrity and your idealism in any way hurt you as a politician?
BILL BRADLEY: No, I don't think it hurt me. I think it sometimes made me a little more inflexible. And that might have meant that I could have cut a better deal, but that was because I was prepared to kind of risk it all on a particular point of view. I don't think compromise is a negative word. It's called legislating.
And one of the problems in Washington today is that-- you ask is it more corrupt than it's been. No, I think it's meaner, and I think it's more partisan, but I don't think it's more corrupt. Remember, in the 19th century, senators were actually on the payrolls of railroads, right?
And so I think what it has become is the way we select and draw district lines for congresspeople has rewarded extremes, and both left and right. And people don't listen to each other. And you have to listen to what your opponent says in order to find that compromise that maybe moves each of your objectives a few inches forward.
And to me, that was the fun thing in politics. It wasn't making the big speech. Of course, I didn't do too well making a big speech anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
But it was actually legislating and trying to find what your opponent really wanted and seeing if you can come together. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you go your separate ways, and you make your statement, and that's life. But you can do that much more now than it's being done in Washington or that it has been done in Washington for about the last, I'd say, 15 years, since about 1994. And that's unfortunate because that means, if you're playing to your extremes, the work that the American people really want done on health care, education, on pensions, on jobs, on the environment, doesn't get done because the only way you get those things done is by listening to each other and finding something that you can get not just a majority but a little bit more than a majority.
KEN DRYDEN: Just to pick up on that, I'm sure it's the same for Bill. The pleasure of what we do is being around lots of people and being able to really share their lives. Our job is to try to understand them, Bill, to try to understand 300 million Americans, me, to try to understand 33 million Canadians.
And we all like to think we are right, but there are a lot of other people who think they're right too. And inside their own heads, they make complete sense to themselves, and it's up to us to discover what their sense is because if we don't understand what their sense is, we are never going to find any kind of common ground. And I think, for the most part, where the differences lie is in the punch lines. It's not in the stories that lead up to the punch lines.
And if you can discover somebody else's story, you're going to find something, chances are, where you can connect into that story. That story is a lot of you as well. At the end, they decide to go this way, and you decided to go this way. But for the most part, you're sharing something.
And in order for anything to get done, you know, you have to find that common ground. I mean, it's an obvious parallel in terms of sports. You've got to find a common ground within a team. You cannot do it by yourself. You maybe think you're absolutely right, and the others are absolutely wrong, but you're going to get nowhere.
And as Bill said, the creative part of it, the interesting part of it, is to try to find that common ground. We're all great at finding divides and of exaggerating divides and dramatizing divides and the rest of it. The real test is whether you can find the commonness.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And in that regard, you both played team sports. You didn't play individual sports. Although some would argue that being a goaltender in hockey is like being an individual in a team sport.
[LAUGHTER]
And you played with intelligent, accomplished men who who would go on to success in other fields, but most of your teammates didn't share your intellectual interests or your outside interests, outside basketball, outside hockey. How did those experiences in the locker room-- how did they shape who you became as legislators?
BILL BRADLEY: Well, I, of course, played on the New York Knicks. And I was white, and the team was dominantly black with the best players. So that gave me an opportunity to see the world through their eyes, which was a remarkable experience. So I always say I learned a lot more from my teammates than they learned from me. And I really think that's true.
KEN DRYDEN: Clyde taught you how to dress.
BILL BRADLEY: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[CHUCKLING]
[LAUGHTER]
And we-- just as a point of interest, about three weeks ago, a month ago, we had a reunion with about seven of the key players, Reed, Frazier, Monroe, Barnett, Lucas, Jackson, and me. And we sat around talking for six hours. And what was clear was here we are 40 years later, and yet how much respect was still in that room that came out of the heat of the battle, that came out of the selflessness that was necessary for each of us to achieve what no one of us could have achieved had we not given up a little of ourselves to the other person.
And, indeed, you might say the room was filled with a little love. And subsequent to that evening, I've had four or five call me, and they've kind of-- they don't use the word love, but they kind of say that.
[LAUGHTER]
And that came out of that team and that experience. So the fact that I read more books is irrelevant, not to me, but to the fact of my experience because I had a remarkable group of human beings to experience America with and perform at the highest levels for five or six years.
KEN DRYDEN: Same story. I mean, it's-- when I was playing, and I'd get interviewed, and maybe the sixth or seventh question-- and it would only be a one on one. It would be out of a scrum. And the reporter would say, how do you get along with these guys?
And eventually, I got mad. And it was, how do I get along with them? Look, we may have some differences. I may have grown up in a suburb. They may not have. I may have gone to university, and they may not have, but in terms of our interests, our time, our focus, where our prides and satisfaction lie, we are 90% the same.
I mean, we share all of that. And I dare you to find 10 other people on the street and people that would seem to be a lot like me where we share 90% of the same kind of outlooks and hopes and the rest of it. And as Bill said, in terms of learning from that other person, we have done some winning before, Bill at Princeton and me here at Cornell. But you don't just arrive as a winner. You arrive into a group that is a little older than you are that is used to doing some winning and teaches you a little bit about winning.
And that was absolutely the case in Montreal. And when you are surrounded, day after day, year after year, with people who really know what they're doing and really take pride in what they're doing and insist on doing what they're doing really well and at the top, that is being around the right people, and that is sharing something that is that commonality, and whereas all those other differences are really irrelevant.
BILL BRADLEY: You know, I didn't realize until I saw the video how great you really were.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
KEN DRYDEN: I didn't either. [LAUGHS]
BILL BRADLEY: No, I'm serious. If you're a basketball player, and they play these videos, you never miss a shot, right?
KEN DRYDEN: With a goal, you never make [INAUDIBLE].
BILL BRADLEY: Yeah. Right.
KEN DRYDEN: That's the problem.
BILL BRADLEY: But six Stanley Cup championships is pretty special. We had two with the Knicks, but six is almost unbelievable. And the point is the other aspect of our common experience is that, with our respective teams, we became the best and the undisputed champion of the world. And you know you're-- now that-- you know, life tends to be gray. That's not-- you're at the top. Your face aches. You're smiling so much. You have chills going up and down your spine. Your fists are in the sky. And that lasts about 48 hours.
[LAUGHTER]
[CHUCKLES] And then you have to start back and say, well, can we do it again next year? But those are unparalleled 48 hours. And when you share that with a group of human beings, you've shared something that's a communion of incredible intensity.
KEN DRYDEN: Well, just on that point, we tried to stretch it to about 96. [LAUGHS] And my wife is here tonight, and she'll probably agree with that. And it was always-- I mean, in Montreal, we won often enough that there was a routine. And so you'd win. And we always won on the road, except the last year.
And then there would be-- former players would have restaurant bars in the city. So we'd go to one the morning after and then another one for the lunch the day after. And then there would be the party at night, and then there'd be the parade the next day.
And by the time two, two and a half days or so had passed, you were really kind of stretching the celebration, but you didn't want it to stop because you knew as soon as it stopped, it was over. And so you'd kind of, well, let's do this. Oh, yeah, sure. Why don't we do that? And we'd carry that on for a bit.
But the one other thing, that even though the intensity of that would fade after a few days, the part that I liked the best, and I think we even talked about it a little bit that day at The Russian Tea Room, was the feeling after that, that it's hard to pump your fist in the air after 96 hours. And people just look at you a bit oddly, especially around the house.
[LAUGHTER]
But the great thing is I always felt, after we had won, that from that moment until training camp began the next year, that I was walking around with an imaginary scoreboard above my head that had the score of the final game, and we had won. And anybody-- and I just figured that everybody could see that score for three months. And if they were on my case about something, about a goal I let in or whatever it is-- sorry, excuse me. Look at the scoreboard. See me in September.
[LAUGHTER]
BILL BRADLEY: But you know, that's a very interesting way to think about it. And I had the opposite experience because the year after we won the first championship, we were playing the then Baltimore Bullets in the finals in the east. Broken play-- ball comes to me. I go the corner. I shoot, and the center on the team, Wes Unseld, gloved, just gets a finger on it, and we lose. And, of course, I had the last-second shot. And so driving in cabs after that wasn't too much fun.
[LAUGHTER]
But then I'm elected to the Senate. Now, it's '71. I was elected in '78, '79. And one of the supporters in my campaign was the former-- was the owner of that Baltimore team and still remains the owner of that team, which is now the Washington Caps. And-- or Washington Wizards. And he sends me a photograph.
[LAUGHTER]
And the photograph is of the scoreboard, and the scoreboard has Baltimore, 91, New York, 90, right? And I'm kind of walking off the floor like this. And he puts a note, and he says, just in case you get a big head in the Senate, remember this day.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
KEN DRYDEN: Well, I think the most famous basketball picture at Cornell, until these last two years, was a picture of the scoreboard at Barton Hall that said Cornell 71, Princeton 69, in 1965.
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHS]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Ken, you almost went to Princeton.
KEN DRYDEN: I did, yeah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And Bill, you almost went to Duke. There were no bad choices to be made among those three schools, but how would life have been different if you had gone to Duke?
BILL BRADLEY: I was sitting in the Senate one day. Debate was droning on, and I was sitting next to Terry Sanford, who was the senator from North Carolina at the time and the former governor of North Carolina, the former Secretary of Commerce in Jack Kennedy's administration, and the former president of Duke. And so we're kind of seated there, and he turns to me, and he says, just as well you didn't go to Duke.
[LAUGHTER]
I said, why is that, Terry? He said, because you'd have never beat Jesse Helms.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Why did you come here instead of Princeton?
KEN DRYDEN: I came here in the end because Cornell had some hockey ambitions and Princeton didn't.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And when I went down to visit Princeton, I liked it. I liked it a lot. I had two good friends who were there, who were freshmen there. I saw a hockey game at Hobey Baker Rink. And while they were kind of talking a little bit with embarrassment about the age of the arena, I thought it was great.
They were playing Brown, who would win the Ivy League Championship that year. And Brown beat them, but it was a close game. And the crowd was exciting. And for somebody who was used to playing Junior B hockey in front of 200 people, I thought it was magic.
And I never did see a game at Cornell before I got here. So I never experienced 4,000 people at Lynah Rink. And so it was a hard choice, but I think, in the end, that's what made the biggest difference. And Bill and I, I think, have both been really lucky that way, of where it would have been very easy to make other choices. And I think we would have made those choices work in some way or another, but I think each of our futures would have been different if we had decided on those other choices. And coming here was absolutely the right choice for me, no doubt about it.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What advice, Senator Bradley, would you have for the students in our audience tonight about what they should be trying to get out of their college education here? There are a few guys who got more out of their educations than you two.
BILL BRADLEY: I'd suggest you learn how to write an English sentence and paragraph.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Are you suggesting something about Cornell students.
BILL BRADLEY: No, no, no, no. Not about Cornell. No, seriously, I think the most important thing that you should get out of your college experience is the excitement of learning, is having a passion about the world of ideas, understanding a little bit how that feels when you say I understand it, and, second, learning as much as you can about yourself. And then no matter what anybody says anywhere, if you know about yourself, and you have this passion for the world of ideas, following it. Doesn't matter who says you should do X, Y, or Z.
To speak personally, when I was in high school, I grew up in a small town in Missouri-- 3,000 people. Everybody said I should go to a big basketball school. I said no, and I went to Princeton.
And at Princeton, everybody said-- you know, we did well and so forth and drafted by the NBA-- you ought to play NBA. I said, well, no, I think I'm going to go to Oxford. And after Oxford, people said to me, well, now you ought to go to law school because you have this pattern. I said no, I think I'm going to play in the NBA.
[LAUGHTER]
And then I decided to get into politics, and people said to me, look, why don't you run for county office. And I said no, I have the idea of running for the Senate, right? And the point is that each of those moments in my life, the advice of people that I respected and even loved was not what my inner voice said to do. And so you follow that inner voice. Having some understanding of what that is when you're in college helps, and then the world of ideas. Now, that little sequence of my biographical moments of big decisions, we will not take to that unerring sense of timing that I had when I decided to run for president. [CHUCKLES]
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: I was going to get to it, but, before that, I wanted to get to the decision you made when your inner voice told you in 1992 not to run for president, when a lot of people were suggesting that you should. How do you view that decision now?
BILL BRADLEY: I don't.
[LAUGHTER]
Ken?
JEREMY SCHAAP: No, no.
[LAUGHTER]
Proceed.
KEN DRYDEN: I decided not to run in '92 too.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Senator, you don't think about it.
BILL BRADLEY: No, I don't think about it at all. You look forward not backward, unless you're a historian.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: OK. Well, then let's talk about 2000 and about your experience, Ken. Ken, you attempted to become the leader of the Liberal Party, which would have put you in position to become prime minister. Bill, you attempted to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2000.
Of course, as athletes, you had known loss. You had experienced seasons that weren't winning seasons, games that were losses. But as two people who at least personally had succeeded in every conceivable way, how do you take defeat, Ken?
KEN DRYDEN: Not entirely well.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, you know, it's rejection. It's somebody, many people deciding that-- too many people deciding that somebody else would be a better choice. And so as you're going through it, and as there is apparently writing on the wall but that you choose not to see, you-- and I think part of it is very much my outlook as a player, and I imagine it's the same for Bill, is that in a game, you know that there's always a way. There's always a way to win.
You may not find it. You may not find it in time, but it's there. And it's your job to find it, and if you keep at it, you assume you will find it, and it will turn out.
And I always assume that on the verge of an election, that even if the polls are way one way, they're way in one direction rather than the other, that on the morning of the election, that it is everybody's right to decide at that moment to say, I don't care what I thought yesterday. I don't care what I thought in all of those days before and what I told the pollsters every day before. I'm me. I have a right. I'm changing my mind. I'm going in this direction.
And it always comes as a shock to me when [CHUCKLES] the night of the election that chances are the polls are pretty close. So you get on with it, and you just-- and it's like OK, that didn't happen. But there's lots of constructive things to do. There's lots of important things to do.
And if not this, then what? And so you're down for a while. You're down a lot for a short time and a little bit for a much longer period of time. And then you're off and into the next thing. And assuming that you do that right, and you have no idea what you may have the chance of doing later.
BILL BRADLEY: When Walter Mondale lost the presidential race in 1984, he went through the normal grieving process. And in that process, he called George McGovern and said, George, when do you get over this? And McGovern said, never. So that's true.
You lost, but that doesn't mean that life is over. To the contrary, that means a new chapter has just begun. And from sports, I think you learn that defeat has a richness of experience all its own.
And if you-- when I lost, I took that insight and then thought about it a while and said OK, what does that mean. I feel how I feel-- now what's next, as you just said. And maybe if you lost, you lost because you should have lost to make you a better person or to open up a new door that would have been closed or to force you to go deeper into yourself to learn more about yourself or to reach out to more people or whatever. And so yeah, I was-- there's a part of me that has a little bit of the George McGovern track, but a lot more part of me loves life too much to dwell on that, whether it's 2000 or '92.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Message received.
[LAUGHTER]
There was a lot of talk after the death of Teddy Kennedy about how after he failed to win the nomination in 1980 against Jimmy Carter, how he recommitted himself to the legislative process and readjusted his goals and how that made him a better public servant, knowing that that goal would never be attainable. How did-- you were no longer in the United States Senate at the time that you ran for the nomination. How did that experience change everything for you, not getting the nomination?
BILL BRADLEY: Well, I think I just answered how it changed, but in terms of another door opening and in terms of continuity, I now have a radio show on SiriusXM Satellite Radio called American Voices. And the premise of the radio show is to allow people to hear the kind of stories that I heard 40 years on the road in America as a basketball player and a politician. Because one of the things you find, particularly when you're a politician, a little less so as an athlete because they're coming at you in a lot of different ways, whereas in basketball, you kind of listen-- you have to go out as an athlete on the road and seek people to tell you their stories. It naturally comes to you as a politician.
And I wanted people to hear those kind of stories. On so I find that I have great joy doing this. It's not-- how many here have heard the radio show? Let's see. There are four. You've just doubled my audience.
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm under no illusion, but I'm really doing this for my soul. And I interview really interesting people. I usually do a story about some unusual festival, like the duck calling contest in Stuttgart, Arkansas, or some unusual profession.
Like, I interviewed the groundskeeper at Fenway Park. And I said, how's it feel to be out there on the field in the seventh inning, scraping? He said, it's incredible.
He says, you're out there, and I said that's where Williams was. That's where Buckner was. Oh, my god, that's where Yastrzemski was. It's incre-- I said, what do you think the people want? He said, they want me to fall on my face.
[LAUGHTER]
And I said, well, did you-- were you there when they won the world championship finally? And he said, yeah, it was a great day. A million people were out. You know, we all got championship rings. I said, you mean a groundskeeper got a championship ring? He said, yeah, we got a championship ring.
He says, and that day was a double win for me. I said, why is that? He said, because that's the day I also graduated from law school. And I said, wait a minute. You're a groundskeeper. You graduate from law school. What are you going to do?
He said, well, I got about three kids, and so I'm probably going to practice the law. But he said, I'll tell you one thing-- I'll be in the summation before a jury one point, and I'll flip that finger out. They'll see that championship ring, and I'll win more than my fair share.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
So you know, something like that. And then I usually interview somebody that's doing something. But when I ran for president I used to call reflected the goodness of the American people, which some politicians thought was a little off [CHUCKLES] the charge, but that was me. That's how felt, and I'm trying to be consistent.
Like, I interviewed a guy who shined shoes at the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital for 46 years. And out of every tip he got, he put a part of that tip into a fund to pay for poor kids' health care. And at the day I interviewed him, which was like two years ago, he'd put over $150,000 in that fund. So I wouldn't be doing these things. That's not to say I wouldn't rather be president than have a radio show.
[LAUGHTER]
But it is to say that one door closes-- another door is open. And it has to do with your own feeling about your own life and about life generally and about the human possibilities that are out there for each of us if we simply stay open and alert every moment.
KEN DRYDEN: I mean that's-- and I'm sure Bill has had the experience. And I know I think when I was playing hockey and going to law school, people would say, well, it's good that you've got law school. And when your hockey career is over, you've got something to fall back on. And thinking, fall back on-- that's not exactly what I had in mind for the next 50 years of my life is something to fall back on.
And no matter what any of us does, and no matter if things work out well at what we're doing, we all think and hope that the next thing is going to be far more interesting, far more challenging, far more worthwhile than whatever it is we've done before, and that, at every stage-- and it may not on paper seem to suggest that, but it may feel that way. And as Bill is describing those kinds of stories, I mean, that's what my biggest pleasure is about being a member of parliament is Ottawa is a lousy place. Washington, I think, is a lousy place.
It is a cynical, hard place where, in fact, people and lives and life stories don't get heard. Other things get heard. Where you find-- where I find my energy, where I find my purpose is to leave Ottawa and to go, and especially into smaller places because in smaller places, people have to try. They've got to try hard.
Nothing comes easily automatically. Nothing is something that they can do themselves. They've got to have the local Rotary Club and the church and the Boys & Girls Club and 10 other groups involved in order to achieve anything.
And so you hear all of those same kinds of stories. You experience the people who are those stories again and again and again and again. And it just reminds you that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I needed that more than they needed to tell me. And they thought it was important for them to just say it. I needed to hear it in order to go back to Ottawa to express my purpose.
JEREMY SCHAAP: We've talked about your achievements in public office, in athletics, but we haven't really talked about your successes as writers, which are significant. You've both written books that many people rate among the finest ever in their genres, The Game, Home Game, Life on the Run. What did putting pen to paper and sharing all of that in book form do for you?
BILL BRADLEY: Me? I have been a basketball player. I've been a US senator. I now work in finance and have my radio show. So I've had three careers so far.
And the one thing that is continuous through that process is the writing. And it used to be that when people heard it that I was starting to write, they'd say, oh, he's leaving that job, meaning retiring or leaving the Senate or leaving-- and so with Life on the Run, which was the first book, I wrote it because I felt that I had seen and felt things on the road with my team that I could communicate, that might not be communicated if I didn't do it. And I respected them and the game and the group enough to want to do that.
And for me, the writing part of it is probably-- I would say, first, being a basketball player, playing the game is the most fun. And being a senator is a great honor, but when you're a senator, that means you got to work 16 hours a day for six years to prove that people weren't wrong. But the greatest joy is sitting down and trying to write, to say something that moves somebody or that informs somebody or gives them an insight or shares a part of yourself.
And so I hope I will always write. Now, I'm not someone that writes on a calendar, meaning, a book this year, a book next year. I got to live life a little bit to kind of regenerative the juices before I say, OK, I'm now willing once again to put myself out there, ready to be hatcheted by the critics or whatever. But there's something in it that I like doing it, so I'll continue to do it.
KEN DRYDEN: I feel the same way.
BILL BRADLEY: And, by the way, all these books are still available.
[LAUGHTER]
The home.
KEN DRYDEN: [CHUCKLES]
JEREMY SCHAAP: They're all in print?
BILL BRADLEY: No.
JEREMY SCHAAP: I think they might be.
BILL BRADLEY: No, no. My books?
JEREMY SCHAAP: Yeah.
BILL BRADLEY: The Fair Tax is not in print.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: But it can be had.
KEN DRYDEN: Yeah. I feel the same. Writing came as a surprise to me. Certainly, in high school, I didn't think I could write at all. I thought that's something that a few special other people could.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Then you met sports writers.
KEN DRYDEN: Well, [CHUCKLES] yeah. That's right. And then, in university, here, I had to learn how to write, to some extent anyway, and found that I enjoyed it more than I thought. And then I decided-- and, in many ways, it was-- at least in part, it was after reading Bill's book that I wanted to take my shot at it as well.
And Bill, I think, was really the first athlete to really write his account. There were lots that were ghost written, a lot that didn't have the ghost writers' names on the jackets, but I think his was the first that was really written by the person. And so I wanted to give it a try.
And then I discovered that-- and after, it took me several months before I started to feel as if actually what was in my head I could see on a piece of paper. I thought it would-- I thought the day would never come where the gap would shrink into nothing, but eventually it started to feel that way.
And then I remember the day that I realized that I always thought that writing was getting down what you knew, and I thought how boring is that, just day after day, putting down stuff that you already know. All right, it's to somebody else's benefit. They may not know. But this is-- that's too selfless. This is boring, day after day, the same stuff that I already know.
And then, at a certain point, realizing no, that what it is is getting down all those things that you didn't know you knew. And then when you realize that-- you start with what you know. And then, well, if that's true, then maybe that's true. And then maybe that. And all of a sudden, you're off.
And, boy, when you're off, I mean, that is fun. And I would have guessed that, well, one, I wouldn't have ever written a book, two, after writing the first one, that I would never write another. And now, like Bill, I love writing.
And, in many ways, and other people have said the same thing is that I discover what I really think and what I really feel when I write. I'm dancing around when I'm not writing it. When I start writing it, I find it, and I really enjoy doing it.
And the great thing about it is that we should be able to do it for long after some of these other jobs they tell you you're too old for. So I hope that's the case.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: What do you want to write next, Senator?
BILL BRADLEY: I'm still in the regeneration phase.
[LAUGHTER]
What do I want to write next? I don't have a plan. I've thought of taking the over 500 stories I now have from this radio show and culling out the 50 best as a possible little book.
I've thought of doing a little something on foreign policy, but nothing is gelled right now. So we'll just have to wait. And a lot of times patience is important. You know, I said what am I going to write? I got to write.
Let things happen. And I don't doubt that I'll write again. I'll write something else. I'm also under no illusion that I'm the world's greatest craftsman. You know, every English professor here at Cornell would be better.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You don't mean that.
[LAUGHTER]
BILL BRADLEY: But the point is that you just have to be patient and let it come to you.
KEN DRYDEN: I'm not sure. I mean, there's one subject that I want to get into a lot, and I think it'll be through politics. Well, it's sort of outside of politics, inside, maybe, articles. But what really interests me the most now, and I haven't quite figured out the best way of expressing it, but it is I happen to think that Canada is a pretty terrific place. And I don't think we know that.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHS] And I like Missouri a lot too and New Jersey. [LAUGHS]
BILL BRADLEY: New Jersey.
KEN DRYDEN: Well, I like New Jersey too. But I think we don't know that. And I think that because we don't know it, if you get your own story wrong, you get the wrong ending, and that it's time for us to understand what a really special and different place is actually what Canada has become.
Canada was a pretty homogeneous place for a very long time. And it is absolutely not now. And I'm not sure that there is any country in the world that is more diverse within a society that has less of a dominant set of understandings than Canada, and meaning that those who come to Canada are actually apart in the shaping of a multiculture
And it's not multiculturalism. It's a multiculture, and it is a genuine global culture. And it is exactly what the world is becoming. It is exactly what the world is going to be, and we're living it out.
And we need to know it, and we need to know that that makes us matter. And unless we know that it makes us matter, we will aspire and dream to far too low a ceiling. And in a global world, Canada can become a much more important place.
And that's what I would like to do. And whether it's books, articles, speeches, or whatever, if I can do anything through politics, I would hope that a number of years from now that it will become second nature for Canadians not to offer the cynical aside to ourselves but a sense of, no, actually, we mean something.
BILL BRADLEY: You know, it sounds to me like that you've got a book.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Or a campaign.
BILL BRADLEY: No, it does sound to me like-- it's great because you'll have perceptions because of where you've been and who you are and the people and how they react to you. You do little research, and it could be a great book. I mean, one of the greatest novels I ever read was written by a Canadian, Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy. It's just an incredible book.
And I thought, you know that-- not that you're going to be Robertson Davies. You understand.
KEN DRYDEN: [CHUCKLES]
BILL BRADLEY: But--
[LAUGHTER]
--I think that it would be a tremendous thing for you to do that. And I'm glad you announced today in Cornell that that [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: What you're wishing for, Ken, will it require a change of government in Ottawa?
KEN DRYDEN: [CHUCKLES] Oh, I hope so.
[LAUGHTER]
The thing that-- what we are also becoming really good at-- as often as we used to have parades in Montreal, we have federal elections in Canada.
[CHUCKLING]
And for those of you who aren't familiar with a parliamentary system that when a government gets elected, it's for basically a five-year period of time, but a government can be defeated during that five-year period of time. And we've had a series of minority governments, and where there are four main parties in the House of Commons. And the party that has the most number of seats has not had a majority. So eventually, the other three parties can end up voting together and bringing the government down.
And I was first elected in June 2004. We had an election, then, in January 2006. We had one in October 2008. And in within about two weeks time, we may well be into another election that would happen before Christmas of 2009.
And so-- but the bad news about minority governments is you end up with all of these elections. The good news is that if you lose one of them, then you have a chance to become the government 18 months later, and you don't have to wait for four years. And so we're dreaming.
JEREMY SCHAAP: It would be a disservice, I think, to everyone here if I didn't ask you, a very knowledgeable alien who comes from a system where there is universal health care, what do you think about what's going on here now?
KEN DRYDEN: Well, I--
[LAUGHTER]
I won't speak exactly to what-- about here, but I will speak to our experience. And we have a very flawed system, but we have a system. And it matters. And it matters to us that we have it.
And one of the remarkable things about it, in a way, is that when pollsters ask Canadians those things that matters the most to them and are the most central to their identity, our public health care system ends up at or near the top, year after year after year. And, I mean, why should a public health care system be so central to one country's identity? Isn't that a little embarrassing?
And it is if that's all that it is. But one of the things that it also represents is that for all of the advantages of Canada living next door to the US, there are also challenges living next door to the US. And one of them has to do with those big directions in which the US goes that Canada may not be inclined to go.
There is such pressure because all of our media, so much of it is American and newspapers and movies and the rest of it. Our set of understandings are so in tune with the US. And for us to have created a national health care system when the US did not and has not been able to, and we have been able to sustain that through all of that, that is a real achievement.
And so these systems have their flaws. And I think-- and Canadians are very critical of our own health care system and often for very good reasons, but it is there. And it is very important that it's there, very important to us.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Bill, is a deal going to get done, a deal that's going to achieve what so many people, like yourself, hope can be achieved?
BILL BRADLEY: I remain an optimist. Yes, I think a deal's going to get done. I think it'll be done in conference. I think the House will pass a bill that's pretty much along the lines that have come out of the committees. Any bill will come out of the Senate, and then the deal will be cut in a conference.
The president-- personally, my view-- gave a great speech last night, and I think that there were a couple notable aspects to the speech. One was that he clearly defined the areas where there is no disagreement, three or four different areas. Then he addressed, forthrightly, the controversies and gave his side of the controversy. And then he offered the Republicans an olive branch, saying be a part of this, when he put out his malpractice reform.
And I just wrote a op-ed in The New York Times, I think, two Sundays ago, where I said in 1986, when we did tax reform, the reason we were able to do it was that each party got something out of it. Democrats got eliminating loopholes, and Republicans got dropping the marginal tax rate. And the more you drop the marginal tax rate, the more you had to eliminate loopholes. So each party got something.
And Democrats want universal coverage, have since Harry Truman. It's been a part of our DNA, in part because of what the president said last night, because we think it reflects the character of who we are as a country and our basic morality, your brother's keeper, et cetera. And so I look at this, and I say, that's what Democrats get.
Republicans have always wanted to have malpractice reform. And now it's very easy to do with something called medical courts, where you have specialized judges, like bankruptcy judges or admiralty judges, where someone brings a case, they bring it to the judge, and the judge throws out frivolous cases. And he then allows the other cases to go through and renders his judgment. So there's a potential, what I call, grand bargain there on these two sides, universal and on malpractice reform.
The thing the president said last night that I thought was the most interesting thing was where he said that-- he kind of wrote it in blood that this will not increase the deficit $1 and to the extent that as increasing the deficit, we'll have to cut spending. Well, the only way that you're going to really cut spending and health care, which is the 100-pound gorilla out there in our economic picture because if we've got $1.8 trillion that we have to finance by October because of the financial crisis, the only way we attract that money from other places around the world if we do something about the health care costs that are going like this.
So he basically said we will cut spending. The only two ways you really cut spending is with malpractice reform. Estimates are 10% of our health care dollar is spent on defensive medicine and malpractice lawsuits, so that's $250 billion right there, a little bit more, and on reforming the delivery system of health care in America today.
A delivery system makes no sense whatsoever. You have a system where people say, well, the best health care in the world's in the United States. Maybe, but the best health care system is not here because we don't have a system.
We have an ad hoc thing that is producing the result that, every day in hospitals in America, the number of people who die from medical errors are the equivalent of a 747 airplane crashing. When you go into a hospital, you are taking your life at risk because errors are not reported. And errors are not reported because if you report an error, you'll be sued and so forth. So patterns don't develop, and things that could easily be correctable are not corrected. So you have to reform the delivery system.
And Michael Porter, who's a professor at MIT, wrote an interesting book not long ago, called Value-Based Medicine, which is, I think, the way you go to reform the health care system, where you have a system where you are-- that it's a combination of the highest quality at the lowest cost, and you pay based upon performance so that, over time, you get a much more efficient system as opposed to duplication upon duplication. And you end up with a healthier people at lower cost.
And I saw, in the president's bold statement last night about not increasing the deficit, that that is laying the groundwork for reform of the delivery system and potentially, if the Republicans choose, a deal on malpractice reform. And can all that get done this year? A lot of it's already done, as he pointed out. The dispute is over this public option, which has been blown out of proportion as to its centrality to everything. And I think the real game is in the delivery system and the malpractice reform. So I remain an optimist.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Is it, in any way, frustrating for you? What is it like when something this important, something that you've championed, something that you worked for in your years in the Senate, hangs in the balance in Washington, and you're not in public office?
BILL BRADLEY: There are times where I wish I was there in the heat of the battle. I'd like to be in the room when the brass knuckles come out and the deal is cut because I figured maybe I could advance a little bit more [CHUCKLES] in the direction that I'd like. But that's not where I am now. Therefore, I have to try to see how I can help from where I am.
So I write an op-ed. I'll do an interview. I'm under no illusion that this is-- I'm making a major difference in the debate, but it's a way of saying I'm still a citizen, as each of you are. And my job as a citizen's to stay informed and speak my mind, and that's what I try to do.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You're both young men--
BILL BRADLEY: Thank you.
JEREMY SCHAAP: --still. No, [CHUCKLES] I--
[LAUGHTER]
BILL BRADLEY: Wait, wait, wait. He said-- he says we're both young men. I'd like to tell you the story of my left hip.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Really get to the right hip before--
BILL BRADLEY: Wait, wait.
KEN DRYDEN: Unfortunately, it's my left hip too. Between us, we have two good hips.
[LAUGHTER]
BILL BRADLEY: Thanks anyway, Jeremy.
KEN DRYDEN: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
JEREMY SCHAAP: You're both young men with much more to offer, especially now. Despite the flaws in our health systems, people live to much more advanced ages than they did even a generation ago. When you think about your futures, with so much already that's been achieved, what do you see in your future, Ken?
KEN DRYDEN: I mean, it's been so surprising all the way along that I don't really know. When I came here to Cornell, coming here was a decision that I would never aspire to and have the chance of playing professional hockey. And that's what the decision was like at that time. If you had those aspirations, you stayed at home, and you played junior hockey.
It turned out that the team here was a lot better than anyone knew. There was expansion going on. Teams were, NHL teams, were starting to give a chance to those who they otherwise had just dismissed out of hand.
I thought I was going to be a lawyer. From the time I was 10, 12 years old, that's what I thought I would be, until about a year into law school, and I realized didn't like-- I didn't want to be a lawyer. I wanted to finish law school and the rest of it, but I wasn't going to be a lawyer.
I ended up playing hockey when I didn't think I was going to. I didn't end up being a lawyer the way I thought. I thought I would never write. I enjoy that.
Politics was something that, if anything, was going to be an ultimate career. That's sort-- I mean, until you get to a stage where it's like, well, why ultimate? There's something else beyond that.
So I don't know. I don't know what the next thing is. I think that what you learn over time is that all of these things that which to other people seem completely disconnected are not disconnected. And everything that you end up doing prepares you for the next.
And I think that everything that I've done in my life has prepared me for what I'm doing now. And I love what I'm doing now. I hope to continue what I'm doing now.
And I still assume that if I do fine at what I'm doing now, I will get a chance at doing a next thing, and a next thing that I don't know what it is. And I don't even want to know what it is. It'll surprise me, and I hope that that will be far more interesting and far more exciting than anything else that I've done in my life.
JEREMY SCHAAP: If you return to cabinet--
[CHUCKLING]
--in what role do you think it might be?
KEN DRYDEN: Well, probably in the roles that I was in, in the previous, when we were the government before and I was a cabinet minister. I was something called the minister of social development. And that covers sort of social justice, social-- it covers a lot of ground. And I like that ground.
And whether it is housing, literacy, people with disabilities, childcare, whatever it is, it's dealing with disadva-- what it is, it's understanding that everybody deserves a chance. And all of us here have had chances. And all of us, I think, in this room can think back to a certain point in our lives when, if there wasn't somebody, if it wasn't a parent here or a teacher or a coach or somebody who didn't see something in me and hang with me a little bit longer, I might not have ended up where I am.
well, that's all the sorts of things that I like to do. That's all that is. It may be anti-poverty strategies or something else, but, really, it's what's the chance. What's the chance? Everybody deserves it. How can you help create it? That's what I would like to do when that next election happens, and we win, and I'm back in cabinet.
[CHUCKLING]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Two weeks.
KEN DRYDEN: [CHUCKLES] Yeah.
[APPLAUSE]
JEREMY SCHAAP: The future.
BILL BRADLEY: I don't know. And I'd like to say to students it's OK if you don't know what is going to happen next year. I think the key thing is to live as authentically as possible every day, with your eyes wide open to possibilities and new experience. And then something comes.
Right now, the way I spend my time, in addition to the radio show, is I try to find young companies that could change the world and finance them. I was in politics to change the world. It's no different. I'm just doing it in a different route.
Will I be doing that two years from now? I don't know. Will I write another book? I don't know. Will I find some way to re-enter public life? I don't know. Will I become a coach in the NBA? No.
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: One last thing I want to apologize for, in the video that introduced you, it appeared that we were suggesting that Phil Jackson, speaking of NBA coaches, was a prominent legislator. He, of course, is not and has not been.
BILL BRADLEY: Well, Jeremy, one of the things I noticed is you are very sensitive to the errors in that thing.
JEREMY SCHAAP: [LAUGHS] I'm just sensitive.
KEN DRYDEN: And Bill, have you ever noticed or seen journalists that are sensitive to errors? I haven't.
[LAUGHTER]
I've never seen it.
BILL BRADLEY: I'll have you know--
JEREMY SCHAAP: I'm pretending.
BILL BRADLEY: --there are journalists, and there are journalists who've been prepared by Cornell to--
[LAUGHTER]
JEREMY SCHAAP: Thank you. I guess the last thing I wanted to discuss, and I'm not sure if I have an elegant question to go along with the topic, is just the whole idea, which we touched on in the videos, that both of you have been famous for a long time, since the 1960s. You've been highly regarded as athletes. And almost from the moment that you stepped out of college, if not before, there were people who expected great things from you. And what has it been like to live your entire adult lives under or with the weight of those expectations?
BILL BRADLEY: Well, those expectations can be a burden if you allow them to. The key thing is to understand those expectations but to not be-- to not have your life determined by the content of those expectations but rather to find your own path within your own reservoir of self-knowledge and act in a way that you're truest to your truest self. And it took me [CHUCKLES] about 20 years and a lot of effort to have that perspective, but I do think that that's what it is.
I mean, when I was at Princeton, I had a certain amount of well-knownness. And I think one of the reasons I went to Oxford was to get away from the well-knownness. I didn't understand it. And then it took me a longer time to understand that and to understand that people are wonderful. I mean, it's wonderful that people expect you to do great things, whatever that means as long as it doesn't cloud your own judgment about yourself and as long as you can go against those expectations if you feel to be the truest to yourself requires you to go against those expectations.
KEN DRYDEN: Yeah, I think, as Bill was describing earlier on, and I'm sure-- I mean, Bill would have been the best basketball player on his team whenever he first started playing and all the way through. And so you're 12 years old. You're 15 years old. You're the best player on the team.
People know it. Your opponents know it. The teachers know it. Your parents know it. Other parents know it. And so you live with it. You deal with it.
And it's means the same. People who-- in hockey, when you're a goalie, they always talk about goalies that they don't-- they can't play in the NHL until they're 23 or 24 because the responsibility is so great. That's wrong. We've been carrying that since we were seven.
That's our life, and it's fine. You get used to it. It's part of the test of it. It's part of the fun of it, but as Bill was saying, in terms of others' feelings about you, and as Bill said, it took him a number of years to kind of learn a perspective on it. It was the same for me.
I remember the first couple of years in Montreal where it seemed as if I could do no wrong. And there were-- at that time, in Montreal, there were probably five daily newspapers. And so it was stuff every day. Well, then something wasn't. Some things weren't so great, and I had to learn at a certain point that I wasn't nearly as good as those people were saying I was when they would say that, and I wasn't nearly as bad as they were saying I was when they were saying that.
[LAUGHTER]
And if I knew that, then I was OK. And then I would stop reading the newspapers, stop watching television and the reports. And I don't. I haven't done it for 30 years and basically because I can't afford the distraction. I can't afford the feeling something too much, either too high or too low from what others will say about me. I've got to get on with it, and I know that I'm not either of those things that they say.
So let's go, and let's just do it and assume that maybe some of it is worthwhile in it, but it become-- as Bill said, you've got to live to your own expectations and your own hopes and standards in it. If you don't, you'll just get jerked around in 100 different ways, and it won't be your life anymore.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Well, I don't want to be too sentimental, but I hope it doesn't take another 30 years to get you guys together. But if it is, I hope I'm there. And thank you. Thank you, Bill Bradley, Ken Dryden.
[APPLAUSE]
And I want to thank all of you also for risking swine flu by being here tonight. Have a good evening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Cornell hockey legend Ken Dryden '69 and basketball great Bill Bradley talked about motivation, living under pressure and learning from failures during a visit to Cornell Sept. 10, 2009 at Bailey Hall. ESPN host Jeremy Schaap '91 moderated the discussion.
After hockey, Dryden served as Canada's minister of social development, 2004-06. He was first elected a member of the Canadian Parliament in 2004 and re-elected in 2006 and 2008. Bradley, a three-time All-American basketball player at Princeton who went on to play for the New York Knicks, served three terms in the U.S. Senate.
